Hip-hop was a big part of my life growing up, especially West Coast gangster rap. The reason I was able to listen to it so freely was that my mom couldn't hear any of it, so we would be driving along just blaring Too $hort's horrible misogynistic stuff, and my mom would just turn to us and say, "This is great. I can feel the bass. It sounds so nice." And we're like, "Yeah, mom. We can feel the bass, too."

Richard Pryor had real sincere and vulnerable moments. Now it seems so cheesy if you stop your act and say, "This is why we have to help them kids. We've got to make sure them kids can read."

I got a naughty thrill out of listening to music that was that dirty, especially being that young and able to listen to it around my parents. Kids would come over to my house to listen to Too $hort records.

I would say emotionally we've all turned into these sort of toxic, shallow, angry, polarized demons screaming at each other from across echo chambers. My whole thing is that I'm trying to get underneath the anger into the truth that's underneath it.

And as a stand-up comic, that's the one thing I'm a little uncomfortable with. I'm not uncomfortable with sincerity in my regular life, but, like in terms of my product that I offer, I think that it's weird, because comics used to be way more sincere in the '80s.

When I first started comedy, me and my friends were kids. I claim - although I know that it's a spurious and probably untrue claim - that we were the first generation of kids to act black.

Part of your process of becoming an adult is admitting to yourself that The Doors were a shitty band.